How Similar are Tagalog and Indonesian?

this video is brought to you by innovative language the creators of Indonesian pod 101 and Filipino pod 101 click the link in the description to check out their huge collection of audio and video lessons for students of all levels hello everyone welcome to the Lang focused Channel and my name is Paul today we're going to compare Tagalog otherwise known as Filipino the lingua franca of the Philippines and Indonesian the lingua franca of Indonesia the most widely spoken variety of Malay basically everything I say about Indonesian in this video will also apply to Malay because their standard forms are very close to each other aside from some different vocabulary but since I'm more familiar with Indonesian the samples in this video will focus on Indonesian Tagalog on the one hand and Indonesian and other forms of Malay on the other are not mutually intelligible but native speakers of either language often say that they feel they should be able to understand the other language but they can't this is probably due to their similar pronunciation and intonation and they might also hear some similar words in the other language partly because of the common origins of the two languages Malay including Indonesian since they're essentially the same language and Tagalog are both members of the malayo-polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family that means they developed from the same language proto malayo-polynesian from which all members of that branch descended speakers of proto malayo-polynesian first migrated from Taiwan to northern Luzon in the Philippines before spreading out across much of maritime Southeast Asia in the Pacific most of the languages of Philippines in most of the languages of Malaysia and Indonesia outside of Papua that is also descended from proto malayo-polynesian so at the core Malayan Tagalog are related though they've been diverging from each other for at least 4000 years and maybe much longer during that time they've developed their own features and have undergone different influences influences on Malay Sanskrit had a heavy influence on Malay vocabulary and literature beginning in the 7th century followed by Arabic in the 14th century once Islam was established in the archipelago later on Malay was influenced by English in bread colonial territories and Dutch in the Dutch colonial territories modern Indonesian which began to be called Indonesian only in 1928 contains more Dutch influence while Malay in Malaysia Brunei and Singapore contains more English influence influences on Tagalog one of the major influences on Tagalog was actually Malay which served as a lingua franca throughout maritime Southeast Asia for centuries so some of the similarities between Malay and Tagalog stem from their ancient common origin and some of their similarities stem from the more recent influence of Malay on Tagalog then the Spanish arrived in Philippines in 1521 and left a massive footprint on Tagalog and other Filipino languages what percentage of tagalog words come from Spanish estimates ranged from 20 percent to 33 percent this definitely accounts for a lot of the difference in vocabulary between Tagalog and Malay and Indonesian Philippines also became a colony of the United States for several decades beginning in 1898 and as a result English is the second official language of Philippines and Tagalog has many borrowings from English since I'm focusing on Indonesian for the samples I'm simply going to refer to it as Indonesian from now on rather than saying Indonesian and Malay all the time generally speaking Indonesian and Tagalog are fairly different in terms of grammar and sentence structure in terms of pronunciation they're quite similar stop consonants in both Indonesian and Tagalog are unaspirated meaning that there's no puff of air after the consonant the way they're often is after Putta and cut in English they both also lack and sounds except for a small number of lone words but many speakers will pronounce them as bah and bah they also have similar sets of vowels Tagalog has 500 an Indonesian has 5 vowel letters but with 6 sounds because E is pronounced two ways either as F or as a schwa in terms of vocabulary the majority of words are different but there are also many similar words including many common basic core words for example some personal pronouns and family vocabulary are similar the words 4i Acco you singular cow cow cow gah we come me Tammy kita kita in Indonesian this is we including the listener and the Tagalog this means me to you or we in the duel you and me together child cannot a not male the lucky lucky lucky malaki there are also numerous words related to household and everyday life Bowl mangu mong kok mosquito net Colombo Colombo you'll notice that often times where there's an O sound in one language there will be an O sound in the other door been to pinto bean to one table major Meza the Tagalog word is a Spanish loan and they also say La Mesa the Indonesian and Malay word is also a loan from Portuguese Meza ladle end o Sun dock and in Malay and Indonesian this also means spoon nature words rock or stone but to battle wind onion honey sky Lang it land fire a P a boy you'll notice that e at the end of a word in Malay and Indonesian sometimes corresponds to a in Tagalog pig Bobby Bob boy crocodile Booya Booya numbers and units of time moon or month bulan one week mingu lingo the tagalog word comes from the Malay word and the Malay word is from Portuguese to mingu year Sehun Sehun for em but Appa 5 Lima Lima 6 nom I mean thousand rebou libo parts of the body i mata mata face Mucca Mucca brain otaku basic states and emotions hope ASSA ASSA sick or sickness suck it suck it delicious hood up Sara in Tagalog this is the most common word you see in advertisements and so on in Indonesian aina is more common to be afraid that good pac-12 laughs now wa taala salamat safety selamat in tagalog it's basic meaning is thank you whereas in Malay and Indonesian it's often used in greetings like selamat pagi meaning good morning other basic verbs to read bacha basa enter ma su paso it's worth pointing out that ma and pas are both bilabial sounds they are both articulated with your lips together so it would be easy for one sound to gradually change into the other to drink minam you know to open booka booka to help all along do you of course I've been intentionally pointing out words that are similar but I want to be clear that most words are not the same so let's look at some sentences in either language so that we can compare their sentence structures but we can also see a more representative sample of their vocabulary in general these sentences mean my child likes cats first in Indonesian and naaku suka Kuching word for word it's child my like cats and in Tagalog mahi League kanako-sama Pusa word for word it's like focus marker child my to plural marker cat one part here seems similar I'm not qu Hanako but we could change this word here Pusa - could be me which means kitten then the sentences will be even more similar we can see that Indonesian is basically SVO at its core sv o Tagalog is basically VSO but another way to think of it is as predicate subject because it's not always a verb in this position in fact this word here mahi league is not actually a verb it's an adjective meaning fond of but a verb would appear here in the same position basically these two pieces of the sentence are versed in Indonesian and Tagalog that's the more common and natural word order in Tagalog but there's also an inverted word order that's more similar to Indonesian but is generally considered less natural and is used less often Nicole I'm a heel eat salmon aku D the subject here uh Nicole comes at the beginning followed by the inversion marker I followed by the predicate this is less common and more formal but probably more intuitive for an Indonesian speaker and for English speakers as well notice that the tagalog sentence has this word that the Indonesian sentence doesn't have on a focus marker this comes before the focus of the sentence whether it's the subject or the object another thing the Indonesian sentence doesn't have is a plural marker like Maga in Indonesian the plural can be shown with reduplicating like reaching Kuching but it's not always used of course Indonesian also lacks an inversion marker like the word I in Tagalog in general Tagalog features more little function words and particles than Indonesian does especially standard Indonesian colloquial Indonesian has some more little words like that verbs one difference between Indonesian and Tagalog verbs is that in Indonesian they have no conjugations for tense or aspect while Tagalog verbs are conjugated for aspect though neither language has different conjugations for person and number let's look at a quick example with Indonesian masa and Tagalog pisaq meaning enter these sentences mean he entered the school in Indonesian dia Masuka sekolah and in tagalog bumaba casa escuela in the Tagalog verb there's an infix M which is used for completed actions but there's nothing like that in the Indonesian verb if we want to talk about an action that's happening now like he's entering the school it's like this in Indonesian dia Saddam Asuka sekolah and in tagalog bumaba sock chasse escuela if we want to talk about an action that hasn't happened yet like he will enter the school it's like this in Indonesian dia akan masuka's Cola and in together pop a sock chasse squelen notice that in Indonesian the verb itself doesn't change but rather an aspect marker comes before the verb and it may be left out the context makes it clear already in Tagalog the verb itself is inflected differently you may also notice that some of the Tagalog inflections are in fixes in the first case M and in the second case there's a doubling of the first syllable followed by the in fixing of M Indonesian verbs do not have in fixes there are numerous prefixes and suffixes which change the meaning of the verb in different ways for example by making it transitive or causative or passive but there's nothing for tense or aspect actor focus and patient focus in tagalog verbs are either actor focus or patient focus that means they have different conjugations depending on whether the focus of the sentence is on the doer of the action or the receiver of the action for example the student read a science book boumaaza a mr. John teen and Ibrahim this is actor focus so the focus is on the student the doer of the action the NASA young is the Jonte on Libra Saga a student read the science book this is patient focus so the focus is on liberal the receiver of the action you can see that the verb inflections that are in fixed to the root are different for actor focus and patient focus you can also see that there are two words that are switched in either sentence hung and none hung is the in focus marker and none is the out of focus marker as a quick side note I should point out that the noun with the in focus marker hung is often interpreted as definite whereas the noun with the out of focus marker is often interpreted as indefinite but definiteness can be changed by adding additional words like isang meaning one and it can also be understood from context based on what has been previously mentioned Indonesian doesn't exactly have actor focus and patient focus like Tagalog does it does have something similar but simpler a distinction between subject focus and object focus subject focus is the basic type of sentence like this sentence meaning a student read a science book Massa SWA Mombasa Bocuse is technically Indonesian has no definite or indefinite articles so the nouns here could also be considered definite but we could more explicitly press definiteness by adding Nia which means it's to either noun or to both maja see Sonya Mombasa Baku signs Nia or you could use the demonstrative pronoun new meaning that object focus usually places the object first Baku signs debauch amasi Sonya a science book was read by the student alternatively this could be Baku science young you betcha Massa Sonya a science book is what the student read notice that an Indonesian there are no markers that show focus or lack of focus like there are in Tagalog we usually know whether its subject focus or object focus based on which one comes first in an object focused sentence in the third person the prefix D attaches to the verb but in the first and second person any prefix is dropped from the verb fukusa in science i Abacha a science book is what I read notice that the verb bachi doesn't have its usual prefix mum because the sentences object focus and it doesn't have the prefix D because that's only for a third person in Tagalog all the personal pronouns are different depending on whether they are in focus or out of focus the out of focus ones are actually a genitive pronouns because they're also used as possessives in Indonesian most personal pronouns are the same regardless of whether they are the focus of the sentence or not as you can probably see Tagalog on the one hand and Indonesian and Malay on the other clearly have some similar features that show that they are related such as their similar pronunciation and similar core basic vocabulary but it's also obvious that they have diverged so much that they are not mutually intelligible with each other partly because of their different sentence structure and partly because of their largely different vocabulary it's worth remembering that Tagalog is just one language of the Philippines and that there are many languages spoken in Indonesia and Malaysia peaking countries like Malaysia and Brunei as well tagalog and Malayan Indonesian are not necessarily the two most similar languages from those countries the question of the day for speakers of Tagalog and Malay and Indonesian how well do you understand speakers of the other language do you understand any do you recognize some words when you hear the other language let us know in the comments down below if you're interested in learning Indonesian or Filipino I recommend you click the link in the description to check out Indonesian pod 101 or Filipino pod 101 they have hundreds of audio and video lessons with full transcripts for students of all levels sign up for a free account and give it a try and a special thanks goes out to my patreon supporters especially these ones right here on the screen they are my top tier patreon supporters and that's why there in the video so many special thanks to them and to everyone thank you for watching and have a nice day [Music]

Channel: Langfocus

Views: 479,635

Rating: 4.9313273 out of 5

Keywords: language study, polyglot, foreign language, linguist, linguistics, Indonesian language, Malay language, Filipino language, Tagalog, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Southeast Asia, Austronesian languages, Malayo-Polynesian, Tagalog Indonesian comparison, Are Tagalog and Indonesian the same?, mutually intelligible, Asian languages

Id: V_JIreztWNY

Length: 16min 19sec (979 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Rezorblade]

Tagalog still sounds nice, I cannot comprehend how silly Thai Language sounds tho

[u/leftoverpaninicrumbs]

So this is why Filipino English sounds American and Malay English sounds British.

[u/eric95s]

Apakah bahasa di filipina selatan mirip dengan bahasa daerah di sulawesi utara?

[u/rajapb]

Masih sama2 rumpun Austronesia.

[u/jakart3]

Tagalog masih masuk bahasa rumpun melayu... Angka 3, dalam bahasa banyak suku di Indonesia juga mirip mirip, tiga telu tilu etc etc

[u/fpschubert]

Why Filipinos And Indonesians look the same?